Wild Apples

My Autumn Tree

My Autumn Tree

by Sue Petrovski

I looked beneath the bark
And color,
A mockery in beauty
Of my aging life.
Played out in golds and bronze.

This old crone of a tree
With its ugly, bony limbs,
Yet filling my world
With the shimmer of burnished bronze;
Sharing my sunlight toward the end of day.

This tree grown from weed?
That reaches now toward heaven
With limbs that downward
Bend and twist; a crooked wreck
But beautiful in an unseen way.

A gnarled copy of my own
Ripened image.
Sowen, as I
In unremarkable soil
From roots of
Unreknown birthright.

Noble only in its color
And stature and task;
To provide shade and shadow -
Doing only as bidden
By genus and phylum.

But more. I lived that tree.
My heart’s joy is in
It’s yearly blessing
As it aches and stretches toward the sky,
Yet readily performs
Its charge on earth.

Who needed more of
An Aging tree - or man
Than what has been given:
Purely, beautifully,
In a grand and honest style?

What did it owe
Besides the valient fact
That it looked beyond the edge;
Moving and flowing with
The tides of life.

It was there.

What Is Our Calx?

A Latin word that means goal is ‘calx’ or chalkline; that line at the end of the race that marks the winner. When we think of the word goal we picture such a moment – when all is done and we have accomplished our desire. It is a time of generalization and exhaltation – “We win! We win! We did it! “ A sense of accomplishment overwhelms us at such a moment, but is it possible that we lose something in the far-ranging scale of our thinking?

It is the daily goal of a life well-lived that is more important to the final finish line than setting some far-off goal. Is life to be lived as a saunter or as a path well-trod with meaning? Each day presents a challenge to the thoughtful. When the dawn breaks it is a new beginning – our eyes open with excitement for what the new day holds. What can we experience today to make life more full of meaning? What can we do today to accomplish that goal. That is our calx.

Nature Sympatico

Yesterday we wound through the hair-pin turns on Berthed Pass, past timberline with its bare face still partially covered with snow. (all this while it was 90 degrees in Denver) We were about 11,000 feet and then, gradually wound our way into a mountain valley through Frazier and Granby to the Lonesome Stone Alpaca Ranch and Mill.

If you haven't nuzzled an alpaca lately it would be difficult for you to imagine the beauty of this animal. Huge chocolate brown eyes lazily watch your every move, and like shy children in school they are intrigued and yet a bit shy to the touch. Politely but pointedly the mother of the newest baby stood between us and her child. An alpaca is a very polite animal. They move slowly and are often kept just as pets, but now, here in the Rockies, a new industry is being born - the alpaca wool industry.

Lonesome Stone has over 60 alpaca, two sheep, an angora rabbit named Q-Tip and a Great Pyrenees Male named Beau. They all inhabit their own 100 acres of mountain grandeur, and Monday was sheering day. The people at Lonesome Stone are donating black and white alpaca fleece and spinning it at a reduced price . Our yarn shop is buying the yarn with donations from our customers and donating the yarn to knitters to knit shawls for Race for the Cure. We have 200 knitter volunteers and are planning to make enough shawls so that we will be able to donate over 30,000 dollars to Cancer research. It's quite a project, conceived and carried out by our store owner who firmly believes that business must pay back to the community.

The way they sheer these fairly large animals and the care that the Native American shearer used was fascinating. Frightened at first, they became quite calm at his touch. I was amazed at his skill and his joy in his profession. He has two daughters in their twenties who are dying from breast cancer so the passion he exhibited was quite real. They place the animal against a table in a vertical position and hold him there while they tilt the table to horizontal and secure it and the animal. Then the shearing begins. The stomach and back portion is collected first. This is the prime fleece. Leg fleece goes on the ground. It is dirty and has a short staple so is seldom used. While they have him up he gets a toenail trim, a yearly shot and his teeth are filed if needed. After the shearing is finished the alpaca is freed, looking like he has been caught in an uneven buzz saw.

The owners have just purchased the mill from North Carolina (it was a cotton mill until that industry went overseas). It is quite large and the process from fleece to the yarn in skeins is fascinating to watch. No, this wasn't raw nature, but it is man interacting in a sympathetic way with nature. These are caring people who love all their animals and their land and have made a tremendous investment of time and money in order to earn a living, of sorts, from the benefits of nature, and with all this, they are giving back.
have ordered part of a cinnamon brown fleece to clean, card, spin and knit into a shawl. It will remind me of my day with quality people in the peace and quiet of the Rockies.

As an added thought, we passed forest after forest of pines badly affected by beetle blight. Is this a case in which man should interfer with the significant damage that is being done or leave it and let nature handle it? I noticed that many small aspen are growing up on the edges and in between the dying pines. Nature at work.

Under the Lamp

For those following my posts, you may have noticed a slight slant toward story or poem or even what one might call, a subjective voice. I find this voice muted in Western thought and reason becomes king over intuition and insight although man's reason is far from infallible and is sometimes trustworthy only on the short haul. If we are trying to 'haul' for something beyond our noses - our reason may let us down.

There is a Mullah Nasruddin story that I love. It is told several ways - this is my version: Mullah Nasruddin was on his hands and knees under the street lamp and his friend passed by asking,

"Nasruddin, what are you doing on your hands and knees, did you lose something?"
"Yes," answered the Mullah. I lost an important key."
"Where did you lose it?" inquired the friend.
"I lost it back there in the dark," replied Nasruddin.
"Then, why, may I ask, are you searching for it here under the lamp?" the friend wondered.
"Do you think I have any chance of finding it back there in the dark?" demanded the Mullah.

It is reasonable to assume that we can find things under the known light of reason easier than it is in the dark. We are comforted by the scientific method and a rational world. But the dark is that area in which we must carry our reason to have any hope of finding the key we have lost. In today's Western world, and particularly in America, we avoid the dark, the doubt, the fear. We search in the best light and then wonder why we cannot find the answers.

A common reaction to the dark is to believe that the key is under the light. In fear of our doubt and anxiety we frantically demand that others find this key where we say it is. We silence all doubt in ourselves and in the world around us by asking others to have 'faith' in a key under the lamp. We are willing to give up our lives in certain situations in order to silence that voice of doubt in ourselves and others, and we are willing to demand that others see our faith as we see it.

Deep in our souls we know that the lamp flickers and that we walk on unfirm ground, and that, then, rules our fear and our futures. The idea that our globe may need tending in order to lesson the damage that the foot of man has caused is in the darkness but a light has been shone upon it by our science. "Keep looking under the lamp!" We implore. Don't doubt! Look under the lamp"

But doubt is a part of faith. Thoreau said, "If I could not doubt, I could not have faith." Each doubting step can bring us closer to the darkness and open our eyes to another step we might take, carrying our doubt with us. The search is all. The more the darkness closes over us and our reason is joined by our intuition, and instincts, the closer we come to an amalgum with the plane of life - the universal, intuitive, searching energy that is the stuff of all life. The key is in the darkness.

I will go to my grave with doubts. But I also go with the knowledge that I have had the courage to live in spite of my doubt, to search, to find connections and analogies - finding some answers that I would have not seen had I not looked in the dark. This is the courage to doubt.

Those Who Hide Too Well

Revelation
We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.

"Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

- Robert Frost (1913)

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The Loss of Simple Pleasures

This day in my journal is dedicated to thousands of selfless caregivers caught in the storm of Alzheimer’s Care in particular and all caregiving in general. The loss of the ability to enjoy simple things; a sunset, a child's smile, holding hands with a loved one - all these are sometimes lost when the caregiver soul is in stress. Caregivers living with a lost loved one, and those who have already experienced loss need to recognize that the absence of joy is a time to give attention to the self. Nurture, rest, and sometimes the chat of a good friend - feed your soul until the light returns.

I lost the joy
Of simple pleasures.
They left me somewhere
In my daily walk
Between yes and no
And good and bad.

I lost the joy
Of simple pleasures
When mother screamed
And walked the floor,
Between care and not care
Day and night.

I lost the joy
Of simple pleasures.
Unholy decisions
Of what to do
How to do it
Cloud my eyes
And leave me cold.

Simple pleasures
In a lifetime earned
Gone and forgotten
Fists clenched and torn.
Strive to give solace
When the mind is no more.

I lost
The joy
Of simple
Pleasures.
Think of that!
How sad. How sad.

Simple pleasures,
Simple life.
I open my grasp and
Invite you in.
A life without
Is barren and grim.

The First Obscenity

The Primer
by Christina Davis

She said, I love you.

He said, Nothing.

(As if there were just one
of each word and the one
who used it, used it up).

In the history of language
the first obscenity was silence.

Davis' book, Forth the Raven is published by Alice James BooksRead more about this poet at the Alice James site.

A Message At Easter

In Iran and other places in Muslim communities the New Year has recently been celebrated with visits and parties with all of one's family and friends. The Seder is being celebrated in Jewish homes and in Christian homes, all mothers are getting ready for an Easter feast. In every corner of every culture this is a time of togetherness and deep prayers for peace and understanding. My Easter feast is a message from my Iranian friend, Alireza Taghdarre who, by the way, is a Shiite Muslim and has family ties to the Dervish communities in Iran. In his words I think we can all find room to feast.

"Every page of every word of wisdom we hear or read kills the old ego and gives birth to a better existence that lives on better spiritual foods. But there's the pain we have to endure for it. Everything comes at a cost. The pain of knowing we were wrong before. The pain of asking the things we don't know. The pain of being aware of our ignorance and of knowing that this ignorance is part of a greater ignorance that we are not even aware of. That is the kind of pain I endure while reading Walden: it's all about birth."

Together, perhaps, we can all survive this pain that we all feel around the world. Perhaps - just perhaps - an answer is to be found by taking off our cultural blinders and finding out how much we have in common?

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."
- Victor Hugo

It took only a mini-second. I looked at the photo and I knew what she represents: the hope of the world. It was so clear to me! This small child holds the future like a fragile flower in her tiny hand. Delazin is her name, she is three months old and she lives in Tehran. She is the daughter of a friend I have made on the Internet.

What matter all your bombs? What gain is there in all the conniving and commotion when it is so simple? Life is short, and too dear to waste on conundrums and conquests. It is her small, wee life that is at stake; hers and the lives of millions of others like her who were born this year around the world.

Shall we make payable tasks for the diplomats and the generals, or shall we simply say, “Let us make the world a safe haven for Delazin’s future” ? Tell the senators and the mullahs and the reverends, and the prime ministers that Delazin will decide the next move. She will play the queen in this international game of “Who Wins If No One Wins”. The insanity, the arrogance, the greed, the no-win game of cat and mouse of all the leaders of all the world are as unimportant as dust compared to the hope and love in her eyes. Why protect the games our leaders play if they are death to the dreams she holds? The moment is all, and the moment is now. Now in the history of man it is time for a clear eye and a wise heart to prevail – for the sake of this small child and for the sake of the Sallys and Joes and Helgas and Ivans of the world.

Is pride more important than her happiness? Is world domination more important? How can a nation or nations want power, power, power, without realizing that the only justifiable reason for power is for the health and wellbeing of its children? Those of us who are older carry in worn hearts the faces of damaged children from Europe, China, Japan and almost all adults have a mental snapshot of the burned and doomed children in VietNam, Cambodia and Laos. We see the starving African children in our sleep and we wince at the thought of the children of Iraq.
We can but ask ourselves, “Will it never stop?” Here is a beautiful, healthy little baby who is well cared for, and in her eyes we witness the hope and eagerness for life that she possesses. The killing must stop. The ruination of human lives must end. Life must triumph. Delazin must prevail.

Preemptive Law?

A Texas friend tells me that in his home state they have started arresting people who are in a bar, if they appear drunk, for “public drunkenness”, on the assumption that they are likely to try to drive home drunk. One man was arrested in a hotel bar – the hotel where he had booked a room for the night.

Like most things in life, there are depths to this seemingly well-meaning action that need to be fathomed. For one, I submit that our laws are not always aimed at preventing harm to other citizens, but are based on a certain segment of society's desire to 'make a better world'. Each of us envisions a Utopia in our mind's eye - a perfect world for our children's children. It may be a more intellectual world, or a world in which everyone can do as he or she wishes if it doesn't harm others, or it could even implode into a world in which all matter of what we call evil might exist. I read a recent article about the intellectual hippies(Clinton, for one), the wigged out hippies that evolved from the earlier ones, and finally, the evil hippies (Manson, etc.) and how each morphed into the other because of misinterpretations of the original ideas of 'hippiedom. It changed from giving man more freedom to "I will create my law and you will obey.”

Here is an interesting thought in a story written by Ron Suskind and posted to Jonathan Larsen on "Petty Larceny", 3/30/06.

“In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out."
The quotation would have been no more clearly a product of The Evil Hippie if it had read, "We create our own reality, man."

Arresting one for being drunk when no harm has been done seems unreasonable, but is it any more unreasonable than preemptive war? In the mind's eye of the public servants, they see themselves as creating reality - preventing possible further trouble - even though it might not ever happen. Until this president we have never acted in such a blatantly preemptive fashion - but once accepted as a norm - we can arrest someone who glares at another, who swears at another, or even...makes ad hominem attacks. Arrest them! Put them in jail before they sully my nice clean community. So, in short, the question is, does a society have a right to take preemptive action against possible trouble, not actual trouble? Or should America remain a place in which your freedom stops where my nose begin? Can we, or should we create our own reality?